Pettitte Plays A Pivotal Role For Clemens

By MURRAY CHASS

Published: January 9, 2008

On the day that Rich Gossage deservedly gained entry to the Hall of Fame, I thought it would be appropriate to create the Hall of Infamy. Charter members: Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire.

All right, only Rose has admitted doing what he was accused of — betting on baseball games — and it took him 15 years to make that admission. But McGwire’s shameful performance at a Congressional hearing nearly three years ago invited a presumption of guilt, and the circumstantial evidence is strong against Bonds and Clemens. Gossage himself pointed to some of that evidence yesterday.

“I think they are on the same level,” he said on a conference call in response to a question about Clemens and Bonds. “I don’t think there’s any question about it. I think that it’s kind of weird that these guys had some of their most productive years when guys in the history of the game, their talents were diminishing as they got older. And, these guys, it didn’t happen that way.”

Bonds and Clemens have steadfastly denied they used performance-enhancing drugs, but their denials have not convinced many of their innocence. Both players have emphasized the impact of their workout regimens on their playing productivity, but Gossage scoffed at that explanation.

“I know what workout regimens do,” he said.

The only difference between Clemens and Bonds is in the excuses, or explanations, they have offered.

Bonds said he used flaxseed oil and arthritic balm and didn’t know that the substances were actually steroids. That’s why he faces trial on perjury charges. The government said he knew they were steroids. Clemens, in his initial denials of the allegations in the Mitchell report, said nothing about getting shots.

But then he belatedly remembered that he had received shots of the painkiller lidocaine and the vitamin B12. It was interesting that Clemens wasn’t satisfied with saying he was injected with just one substance. He duplicated Bonds and named two substances that he used.

It was also interesting that he invoked B12, for two reasons:

That was what Rafael Palmeiro said Miguel Tejada gave him in 2005, suggesting that a tainted B12 sample led to his positive test for steroids.

Also, players traveling between the United States and Latin America are said to label their containers of steroids and human growth hormone as B12 to get them through customs.

•

No interviewer, not Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” or any of the reporters who attended the Clemens news conference Monday, asked him if he had prescriptions for lidocaine and injectable B12. If he didn’t, he used them illegally. If he did have a prescription, why didn’t he have the doctor who prescribed them give him the shots? If not the doctor, why not the team trainer? Why his personal trainer?

Many other questions could be raised. For example, when Brian McNamee, his former trainer, asked him repeatedly during their telephone conversation last Friday, “What do you want me to do?” why didn’t Clemens tell him: “Just tell the truth: I didn’t take steroids.”

The problem is McNamee might have responded, “I have told the truth, Roger, and you know it.”

In the view of a New York criminal defense lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity: “If you are purer than the driven snow, you fear no response. You ask only for an honest and truthful exoneration.”

Exoneration or conviction could come next Wednesday at a scheduled Congressional hearing. If Clemens and McNamee stick to their stories, one of them will be lying under oath. The key to the conflict is Andy Pettitte.

Pettitte, former teammate and workout partner of Clemens, has admitted using human growth hormone with McNamee, as the Mitchell report said. Pettitte’s admission bolsters McNamee’s credibility.

Clemens said he had no knowledge of what Pettitte was doing, but that is difficult to believe. In their relationship, Pettitte was the little brother, the puppy dog, who followed big brother and copied everything he did. There seems to be no way Pettitte would have used H.G.H. without discussing it with his role model.

Pettitte would also very likely be in position to know if Clemens used steroids and H.G.H. Players generally might not have stood around the water cooler and talked about steroids, but Clemens and Pettitte were so close — Clemens aborted a brief retirement to join Pettitte in Houston — it would defy common sense to think one didn’t know what the other was doing. If Pettitte appears before the Congressional committee and is asked what he knows about Clemens, if he knows, he will be faced with telling the truth or lying. I don’t think he would lie, not a guy who so readily admitted he did what the Mitchell report said he did.

•

Pettitte isn’t talking right now. “It’s premature for Andy to have any comment,” Jay Reisinger, his lawyer, said after landing in Houston for a meeting with Pettitte. “It’s not something we can comment on.”

Pettitte did the right thing by admitting his use, Gossage said, and others should follow. Gossage talked, on the conference call, about the history of the game and the great players who played it and how “they can’t allow steroids to get into the history of the game.”

“If you did it,” he added, “the best thing is to come clean, ’fess up, and life will go on.”

News source：http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/sports/baseball/09chass.html?ref=baseball